


Fleeting

by FreeShavocadoo



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Angst, Character Deaths, F/M, Introspection, Odd relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 19:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15564711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreeShavocadoo/pseuds/FreeShavocadoo
Summary: Miller had been chasing things for too long. It was about time he caught something.





	Fleeting

Seeking death was a harder journey than Miller had ever thought possible. He’d been flirting with it longer than he’d ever entertained a woman, always with an outstretched hand with the sensation of pain on his fingertips but never with death in his grasp. Some things, it turned out, hurt more than dying. Men like Holden practically revelled in their ability to swerve from death triumphantly, to survive despite the odds and the cost, just _because_. Miller can barely remember a time he felt so strongly he was willing to give up the world for someone, not until he put a picture of Julie Mao in his pocket and began his swan song in an attempt to find her. Whatever part of me that was hopeful, that wanted to live and be something more, Miller thinks, died on Eros with the souls of 100,000 innocents and Julie Mao.

 _Julie Mao._ Slumped on the bathroom floor, disfigured but nowhere near enough that Miller wouldn’t recognise her face in a crowd full of people, practically able to trace his fingers in thin air to the lines of her face. He doesn’t need to look at her eyes, not that he could for longer than a second, to know how scared she was. He can feel it in his old weary bones, creeping up on him the way age and desperation had. Choking him, wringing him dry until there was nothing left. If someone who had everything, who was willing to give up everything was dead on a bathroom floor with not the vaguest indication that anyone truly cared about her whereabouts other than a has-been or a never-was, then what hope did Miller have? The worst part is, every instinct he has screams for him to close her eyes, to cover up her fears and her desperation. As though it would make it easier. To take her hand in his and say words of passing he’d given up on even whispering over the bodies he could see in his sleep, too many to recognise and acknowledge. But not Julie. She’d always be the first face he’d see, the only face he’d see. Now it was just plainer than it had been before in the back of his mind- Julie Mao was never yours and she never will be.

Walking through Eros was like stepping into his subconscious, the wails and fragments of the dead drifting through the air. Not menacing or malicious but ghosts, still, not what they once _were_ but a reminder of what they should have still _been_. He’s walked this path a million times in his sleep, it doesn’t matter if he’d only walked it once. He’d never forget it. The blue tinge to the air is oddly comforting, the breeze of voices barely hanging heavy in the air when he lets his feet carry him in a direction he would never be able to avoid even if he tried. His north star. _Julie_.

 _She would hate what you are,_ Anderson Dawes had said, like he knew what Miller was. Belters had a naturally ingrained sense of biased justice, believing they were owed the universe because that would be the only compensation for a life that was so lacking, such a struggle. As though those with the most don’t have more to lose. _Like Julie_. To say ‘what you are’ as though Miller really _was_ anything before Julie seemed void, a lifetime ago, a vague memory. Had he been truly living, or just surviving, like so many Belters barely do? Their lives were not even seen through clear eyes, fresh air or youthful innocence. More than zero-g had crippled their backbones beyond repair, obscuring their view of everything and everyone until violence and suffering was the only language they knew, so it was the only language they spoke.

 _You can’t take the Razorback._ She sings, her voice unmistakable. _You can’t take the Razorback._

There she is, in the middle of the room, blue and fleeting and beautiful. Always an outstretched hand away. Miller wonders briefly who’s evaded him more successfully, Julie or death. He’s not sure which one he’s wishing for more, when he walks over to her and takes her hand, her nonsensical rambling still better than anything Miller could come up with. If the OPA had been Julie’s cause, her motivation for seeking out a better life, then she had been Millers.

“Julie-,” his voice is soft, his hand in hers is so comforting, so familiar, “Julie, you need to stop.”

She shakes her head, her eyebrows furrowed and her face laced with confusion, her hair splayed out in every direction around her, like some macabre painting, beautiful but morbid. _She’s gone_. Miller has to remind himself, even though she stares with eyes that see and grips him with hands that feel.

“Yes, Julie, we have to go back.” He kneels down beside her this time, his helmet off. She stares at him, like nobody has ever stared at him before. With trust, reassurance, hopefulness. “We need to go to Venus.”

 _Venus_ , the air around him seems to sing, Julie’s eyes wide and her mouth parted, so beautiful, so perfect. _Gone. Like the 100,000 lives floating in the air._ Yet she nods to herself, bringing him closer to her chest, bringing him a comfort he’d never known he’d needed. Her mouth on his is just right, like he’s finally gaining the ability to feel once more, even as they hurtle towards Venus and away from the only two homes Miller has ever had, both of which he’d walked away from for Julie.

_Maybe death wasn’t evading me after all with her hand outstretched. She was waiting to be chased, to be desired._

_It turns out death and Julie had both caught up with him eventually._


End file.
